Menendez brothers to stay in prison for 1989 murders after parole denied

Lyle Menendez was denied parole on Friday by the same board that a day earlier rejected his brother Erik’s appeal for freedom after serving decades in prison for killing their parents in 1989 at their Beverly Hills mansion.

The reason was the same: misbehaviour behind bars.

A panel of two commissioners denied the 57-year-old parole, noting that he still displayed “antisocial personality traits like deception, minimisation and rule-breaking that lie beneath that positive surface”.

“Joseph [Lyle] Menendez was denied parole for three years at his initial suitability hearing today,” read a brief statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The outcome of Lyle Menendez’s hearing is the latest blow to a movement that has swelled in recent years, amplified by Netflix’s smash hit dramatic series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

The show and myriad documentaries have fixated on the gory details of the 1989 shotgun murders, and the televised jury trial that captivated audiences with accounts of their abusive upbringings and posh lifestyles.